Tag Archives: Peter Thiel

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These next 4 years belong to the Republican Party. They will own whatever emerges from their ruling triumvirate…all 3 branches of government, headed up by Trump and his sidekick, Steve Bannon. Republicans have hit the jackpot…the power ball lottery of politics!!!

I am more than willing to let Republicans take full credit for everything and anything their dynamic duo has a hand in…the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Two weeks into this administration, we’ve been hit with an abundance of…the worst and the ugliest.

With millions of Americans rising up in protest against the dictatorship of Trump/Bannon,it’s unfathomable that Republican politicians continue to rubberstamp whatever those two send down the pike. Whether they are trying to hang onto their jobs, including health insurance in which their constituents should likewise share, or glory in their once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to cram all their policies down our throats, Republicans like Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan are complicit in our country’s descent into immorality under this presidency.

The so-called Capitol Hill experts are scurrying about like obedient kindergarteners effecting policy for the dictators, themselves new to the political arena. Trump and Bannon must laugh themselves silly behind closed doors, as well they should. They have accomplished what no one before them has been able to do, including the billionaire Koch brothers and their Tea Party followers.

Neither Trump nor Bannon have made a secret of their pasts. Both were widely written about during the months leading up to the election. It’s obvious that few cared to educate themselves, preferring instead to buy whatever these two men were selling.

It’s no surprise we’ve landed where we have, with all of us paying for the immorality of some. Our democracy is suffering a seismic, constitutional earthquake. Whether or not morality remains the underpinning of our freedom is dependent upon those willing to stand up to autocrats and their minions. And as we’ve witnessed recently, the number of freedom fighters number in the thousands.

Let’s hope the combined power of the White House and the Republicans on Capitol Hill does not thwart the resistance effort. It’s essential we continue to play defense against the Trump/Bannon autocracy throughout the next four years.

Kelly Anne Conway, Trump campaign manager-turned-senior advisor, provided poignant insight into this presidency. If the facts don’t suit, turn to “alternative facts.” Trump and all who pledge allegiance to him will subvert universal truth in order to further their hard-right agenda.

Personally, I plan to continue writing posts aimed at keeping the focus on a White House occupied by autocrats.

Peter Thiel, billionaire owner of the online site “Pay Pal,” supported Trump’s run for the presidency and is part of his transition team. Thiel, like Bannon, no longer believes in the America for which we now stand. Both want it upended and refashioned according to what they believe.

According to a November 2016 Politico Magazine article, “The Anti-Democratic Worldview of Steve Bannon and Peter Thiel” by Jedediah Purdy, Everett professor of law at Duke Law School…

Bannon believes that the political force rising to defend all these values today is “a global tea party” that links Trump, Brexit voters, the anti-immigrant and anti-Islamic National Front in France, and Narendra Modi’s nationalist government in India. These groups, Bannon says, may be incidentally racist or attract some racist elements, but those elements will “get washed out” and leave their pure and proper value, which is the nationalist defense of enlightened capitalism. They are the ground troops of the coming struggle, rebuilding a West that can defend itself and is worth defending.

Thiel, a professed Libertarian, has said that he no longer believes in the compatibility between democracy and freedom.

Finally, according to Purdy…

This much is clear: Bannon and Thiel believe their ideas have found the perfect host organism. They won’t be the last.

Watching Hillary Clinton address supporters in Tampa a couple of days ago, I found myself back on familiar ground…feet firmly planted in the America I know and love. I saw myself among the smiling faces seated in back of her…all “mutts” who call these United States home, regardless of our pedigree.

STRONGER TOGETHER is the pledge Hillary is making, and one that all who believe in our democratic system can get behind. All of us together will move America forward as we have done since our country was founded.

On the competitor’s side, Trump supporter Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, one of the speakers at the RNC, appears representative of those aligned with their nominee. Thiel is against a democratic America; preferring instead an autocracy. In “The Education of a Libertarian,” dated April 13, 2009 Thiel wrote “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”

In his acceptance speech, Trump magnanimously promised to take care of all Americans and “make the country great again.” Somewhat reminiscent perhaps of another seemingly magnanimous figure who promised to return his country to the greatness it had known prior to WWI. And so another world war was waged in which millions of lives were sacrificed for the cause. In its aftermath, Germany was devastated and the Germans were branded the most hated people on the face of the earth.

The first graduate to address Welsley College as valedictorian on May 31, 1969, Hillary said “ ‘One of the most tragic things that happened yesterday, a beautiful day, was that I was talking to a woman who said she wouldn’t want to be me for anything in the world…She wouldn’t want to live today and look ahead to what it is she sees because she’s afraid.” ‘

Hillary went on to tell her graduating class of 400 that “Fear is always with us but we just don’t have time for it. Not now.” Almost five decades later, the Democratic nominee for president is still fear-less.

There is no time for fear.

Never in America’s history have we stepped away from a challenge. Americans have always united against the common enemy, including Japanese citizens whose families were stripped of both pride and property and relocated to internment camps during WWII. And during the Civil War Blacks donned the Union’s blue uniform, even though EQUALITY for their people was never something they imagined.

Today our enemy masquerades in the form of Trump’s message to “make America great again.” It signals a return to an America where fear of people different from ourselves inspired vigilante activities that led to lynchings and mob retaliation.

As recent as March 21, 1981, 17-year-old Michael Donald, a black teenager was hung from a tree by members of Alabama’s Klu Klux Klan. Donald just happened to be…in the wrong place, at the wrong time. His life was taken because a black defendant was acquitted of killing a white policeman during a robbery. “Bennie-Jack-Hays, the second-highest-ranking official in the United Klans in Alabama, said: “If a black man can get away with killing a white man, we ought to be able to get away with killing a black man.” Hays’ 26-year-old son, Henry Hayes, one of four white men involved in the lynching was executed for the murder on June 6, 1997.

And let’s not forget the racist rhetoric of George Wallace who in 1963, as governor of Alabama, tried to prohibit blacks from enrolling as students at the University of Alabama. President Kennedy, backed by the power of the federal government, forced Wallace to stand aside. The following day, Civil Rights leader Medgar Evers was assassinated in Jackson, Mississippi.

As the fear messenger, Trump is inciting his supporters to take the country back to a more familiar world order. And some may already be answering that call.